Christina Hendricks says her agency dropped her after she took 'Mad Men' role

It’s hard to imagine a time when Hollywood didn’t think AMC’s Mad Men would work out. Eight years after the show launched, Matthew Weiner’s 1960s ad agency drama is now one of the most influential and copied shows on TV. But before that, HBO passed on the show and now Christina Hendricks said that her agency was so convinced it wouldn’t work that they dropped her.

Hendricks did a new interview with The Guardian to coincide with the U.K. release of God’s Pocket, which starred the late Philip Seymour Hoffman and was directed by her Mad Men co-star John Slattery. In the discussion, Hendricks said that while her manager did support her decision to play Joan Harris in Mad Men, her agency didn’t.

“They said, 'It's a period piece, it's never going to go anywhere,’” she recalled. “‘We need you to make money and this isn't going to make money.' They ended up dropping me."

She explained that she had been on several shows before and many hadn’t worked out. When she saw the Mad Men pilot script, she fell in love and decided to take a chance.

“So there was no sure bet and I'd already taken a chance on them and I felt, why not do the one you're in love with and take a chance on that?” Hendricks said.

According to TV Guide, Hendricks did say that the Mad Men series finale has already been filmed.

“We all just stuck around,” she said of the last day of filming. “We didn't want to leave.”

The second half of Mad Men’s seventh and final season premieres next spring.